Before we talk about results, let’s take a moment to review what we learned last week:

Impressions (i.e. position in search results) is determined by:

Keywords and match type (exact, phrase or broad)

Bid per click.

First takeaway–despite getting 27,000 impressions across both campaigns, I only sold one book. On the plus side, I only spent $11.52, so not a huge investment for an opportunity to start figuring things out.

Second takeaway is that Campaign #2 did much better than #1 in terms of impressions (like, three times better), but they used the same keywords, matching and bid per click. Both ads ran at the same time, so that’s not a factor.

The only difference I can identify between Campaign #1 and Campaign #2 is the ad copy. The copy for campaign #2 contains the word “winner,” which is a broad match for my keyword “win-win.” That accounts for 1212 extra impressions, but it doesn’t explain the full delta.

For example, Campaign #1 got 1120 impressions for the keyword “books,” while Campaign #2 got 3510–three times as many.

Third takeaway is that, while Campaign #2 did better in terms of impressions, Campaign #1 did better in terms of clicks per impression by 40:1.

If I’m constructing an ad campaign aimed at brand awareness, which has value for a total newbie like myself, but no immediate payoff, the second campaign was better.

If, on the other hand, I’m shooting for impressions that drive clicks, the first worked better.

My fourth and final takeaway from this initial foray into Amazon ads is that before I try this again, I need to glean a much better understanding of how Amazon ads work.

Some of the other Eight Ladies have indicated they’d rather stick a fork in their eye than spend hours analyzing data. I, on the other hand, have a data analysis background and I’m totally geeking out over this.